Quickly after its launch on the appstore on Oct12, german Skobbler out of nothing skyrocketed to #1 at all payed apps.

No wonder at a competitive price of €3,99 for Navteq maps on Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) and fully fledged (yet hybrid) auto and pedestrian navigation with voice guidance and turn-by-turn instructions.

That's a bargain compared to Navigon, TomTom and all the other navi apps at much higher price tags.

What started as a scoop turns into just another scoop:
as Skobbler communicates through both its (german only) blog and the descriptive page in the appstore, the initital introductory price is skipped and raised to €7,99 - and still a hot deal.

Surprisingly and effective on March 10, Skobbler announces a switch from Navteq base maps to OpenStreetMap. For whatever ever reason this announcement needed to be made in the first week premiering Skobbler on the appstore, the tactics remain unclear.

What happened?

skobbler was founded in September 2008 as a management buy-out of NAVIGON AG. The company is privately funded and shareholders are former employees of NAVIGON AG. Majority shareholder and general manager of skobbler GmbH is Peter Scheufen, who led NAVIGON AG over almost a decade as CEO. In February 2009 and out of 186 applications, skobbler promptly won the the European Navteq LBS Challenge with its cross-platform LBS application as happy Oliver Kühn received an applauded 100.000U$ worth of Navteq licences in Barcelona.

As skobbler started out as a "daily companion to urban people, combining city maps, city magazines and real-time information on connected handsets" generating suspectedly random revenues via sponsored links, the move to a competitive navigation market seemed to be too much of a stretch. Wonder who didn't like a raising star?

Will skobbler get the turn and make OSM professionally routable or did we just witness the opening episode of "one-trick pony vs the empire"?

Holy cow!

United Maps' UM-DE, our comprehensive map of Germany on hyperlocal scales consists of 101.629.970 datapoints. Slightly more than one hundred million.

Of course that's comparing apples and pears - however the volume is amazing. Compare this to your conventional datasets and you'll like see a tenfold increase in data: streets, places, POIs and much more you won't see on conventional services.

By the way: here's our latest company profile, detailling what it's all about - German and English versions.

Content rich maps bring much more value.

You only recognize that if you overlay conventional map service like Google Maps (base data by Tele Atlas), Microsoft BING (base data from Navteq), OVI maps, Yahoo! Maps or OpenStreetMap with United Maps' professional vector data.

Stunning.

If the detail is gone - you suddenly want to have it back.

A 2' video is on the frontpage, also on YouTube and Vimeo:

Just in time to submit our proposal to the annual "Galileo European Masters Satellite Navigation Competition 2009". As even the sharpest signals need maps to be marked on, I hope the jury sees it the same way.

Here's the condensed posters we submitted:

In a prosaic statement, Marc Prioleau announced on CloudMade's blog ...

(...) to dissolve the ambassador team and build a team that will focus on partnering with national and local groups, support finding and importing public data and communicating local success stories

That's what I'd call an oxymoron.

Meanwhile, and reverting myself - Prioleau twitters:

@cageyjames & @pmbatty: CloudMade Ambassadors are all troopers. But we needed to change our approach. Goal = Map Complete. Much more to come

 Condolency tweets by Russ Nelson and dead silence over there.

There were a number of comments on yesterday's 'You shall not remit OpenStreetMap':

• Richard Fairhurst points to quantity, coverage, scaling and 'less aggro' and the widely accepted fact that "OSM can be better than any other mainstream data source - whether OS or TA/NT"
• Dave comments on OSM's London homestead and the strong contribution from there
• Muki Haklay emphasises that "in the crowdsourcing way you can have good quality, reasonable and useful coverage and effective basis for GIS analysis without paying a lot for the data" and "not trying to have perfect accuracy and quality unless you need it"
• John McKerrell rightfully states that Muki's goal was to "quantify the levels of quality available from OSM data" and claims that CloudMade being mentioned appropriately.
• Well in the middle Steve Coast just yawns that "(...) Wikipedia will never work either!" (without taking up the argument).

So let's do all at once and add some spice.

Coincidentally Denis Zielstra from the University of Bonn provided first results of his diploma thesis, where he repeated Muki Haklay's comparison of OSM with data from Tele Atlas Multinet.

The poster is in German:

• OSM data from April '09 is compared to Tele Atlas Multinet 2008/01 covering Germany
  
• length and differences of street segments are calculated
• OSM data decreases in rural (less urban) areas
• OSM is better than TA in metropolitan areas and covers more pedestrian ways and smaller streets
• preliminary conclusions:
• heterogeneous data quality within OSM
• good OSM data within metropolitan regions
• OSM generally provides good positional accuracy
  

Without anticipating the final analysis: Muki Haklay's analysis seems to apply to Tele Atlas data in Germany.

Now let's shed some light on CloudMade and release some of Steve Coast yawning that "(...) Wikipedia will never work either!".

In mid '08, Sunstone Capital A/S invested a whopping 2.4m€ into CloudMade, the commercial venture run by OSM founders Nick Black and Steve Coast. CloudMade offers a set of free Mapping APIs, Tools and Services and seemingly intends to make money from paid professional services.

Counting from the Team page, there's well over 50 people working in the US, UK and Ukraine. Even by modest standards, Sunstone's injection should have gone quite a while ago.

Now "under the guidance" - or having taken over or extended the investment of Sunstone Capital A/S - by Progression Partners, a venture capital firm with Juha Christensen and Christian Petersen, who both serve on CloudMade's board, CloudMade's "commercial interests center on street map parity along with depth & breadth". As Marc Prioleau, CloudMade's recently appointed CEO, coming from deCarta is cited "Monetization will come eventually", one could wonder where the money should come from as long as the CC-SA-BY-licence effectively prohibits commercial use of OSM-data, the ODbL won't change much and free products don't add to a positive cash flow.

Even if OSM data will get better and cover flat world more quickly (I am the last one to doubt that) - How will CloudMade make money from volunteered contributions without violating OSM licencing schemes? Even if monetization will come eventually, investors like events of that sort. However - not my cup of tea.

The (admittedly provocative) statement "Is the active crowd made up of a handful of (paid?) CloudMade activists?" probably needs some clarification. At the Where 2.0, I talked to some OSM's "community ambassadors" trying to understand what they're up for. It seems to be a mix fixed salary and profit sharing: the more data volunteering contributors managed by a (CloudMade) community ambassador bring in, the better the payment. If it is handled alike, it smells a little bit.

If there's a community collecting data at no cost and business models will eventually emerge to support ad-based, donation-based revenues (quote Marc Prioleau), ‘Volunteered Geographical Information’ (VGI) is a nice leverage for CloudMade ... but still: it's far away from Wikipedia.

Ed Parsons recaps the SOTM '09, citing Muki Haklay's updated comparison of OSM (OpenStreetMap) vs UK OS (Ordnance Survey) Meridian 2 data. The original article from August 2008 was widely cited as a proof of feasibility for OSM and misleadingly shortened as "the quality of the [OSM] data is comparable and can be fit for many applications".

In terms of spatial accuracy Muki Haklay has made a specialism of accessing OSM data quality and his latest results presented at SOTM suggest that using the UK as an example, OSM data is better than the equivalent business geographics product produced by the OS, and in some cases comparable to OS MasterMap ITN data, a product that costs over £100,000 per year to license.

To make a long story short: OSM is getting better compared to 2008 but still OSM is far from professionally reliable.

(Beware, this is a long read.)

'You shouldn't bash the good guys'

Less exalted comments to fancy Web 2.0 phenomenons like collaboration, grass-roots actions and creative commons carries the harsh risk of being labeled as conterrevolutionary egghead. Or worse. So let's state that once and clearly: the achievements and dynamics of the Open Street Map Project are breathtaking, insanely great and probably the best single example of the Internets' usefulness. Mapping the world is a vision worth spreading.

United Maps - though being a commercially oriented venture - supports OSM projects and more is to be announced soon.

Nevertheless, there's quite some attributions to the brave new world of mash-ups and webtwosomethings that should't be trusted blindly. And: OSM ≠ Cloudmade.

cities ≠ coverage

I re-read Haklays excellent article with open eyes. I did so several times.

The conclusions the original paper draws are stunningly different from what is touted in PR releases. End of April, I called up Dr. Haklay and cleared some (of my) misconceptions.

In a nutshell, the result of the analysis is that OSM data is suitable for cartographic products that display central areas of cities. Not less, not much more.

By coverage, the centers of major UK cities are well mapped and covered, though, as you move from the centres to the edges, the quality of coverage deteriorates rapidly. In areas where OSM information is complete and with fully attributed – an area of about 20% of England – it is estimated that OSM quality is such that it can be a replacement for "Meridian 2".

The subsequent comparison with OSM also helps to clarify why a price tag of about £1300 for a licence for the Ordnance Survey's "Meridian 2" is reasonable in terms of quality and in explains why professional grade data has a professional price tag.

OSM ≠ Wikipedia

Unlike Wikipedia, where the majority of content is created at disparate locations and by "desk research", the OSM community also organises a series of local workshops (called ‘mapping parties’), which aim to create and annotate content for localised geographical areas. Interestingly, even OSM's frequent mapping parties don't bring much new data on a larger scale.

Again unlike the Wikipedia, mapping out there in the wild is not funny if it's windy, cold and getting dark. As it is most of time in central Europe. Wikipedia definitely has an advantage here.

incompleteness ≠ feature

As an end user, you probably will accept "imperfected, unfished work in progress" but whitepace is nothing you'd tolerate on a professional map with a distinct commercial use case.

As Steve Coast is cited to state ‘it’s important to let go of the concept of completeness’ in an interview (GIS professional, Issue 18, October 2007, pp. 20-23). Put this into a nasty perspective: "sure ... if one sacrifices completeness, every bug turns into a feature to be improved later on ..."

Or as Haklay puts it "As OSM relies on the decisions of contributors about the areas that they would like to collect, it is interesting to evaluate the level in which deprivation influences data collection." - or in other, my words: you cannot tell volunteer OSM folks where to map which features. They either do it because they feel an intrinsic motivation or it isn't done, resulting in eternal "imperfected, unfished work in progress".

You cannot direct the crowd

If volunteering contributers decide to leave white spaces open, then OSM coverage likely never will be completed as there is a natural bias in data gathering for nicer, more mainstream places. To take it to the negative: Is OSM then "shunning socially marginal places" - read as: only "cool and sunny places are mapped"?

(...) most of the data capture (80%) was carried out by 90 participants and a very large group of users disengaged from the project after minimal contribution.

Deductively this means that a tiny fraction of the 135.208 registered contributing users (as of July 14th 09) are actively mapping and contribute useful data.

The point is that the crowd doesn't work like professionals would, see p5 at this slideshare presentation "Beyond good enough? Spatial Data Quality and OpenStreetMap data":

• "We know little about the people that collect (the data), their skills, knowledge or patterns of data collection.
• Loose coordination and no top-down quality assurance processes - can't produce good data
• It is not complete and comprehensive - there are white areas."
  

Nevertheless it's stunning that ...

"OSM is better than Meridian 2 in terms of positional accuracy and less accurate than MasterMap."

Haklay comes up with an intersting hypothesis that couldn't be better formulated:

"When people buy geodata, they pay for the errors or the notion that the errors are well known and quantified."

I state this because this exactly this the argument we at United Maps have with both first and second tier suppliers and customers: providing data as good as technically and commercially feasible provides unseen commercial value if the confidence level is clearly labeled. But if confidence or error level is unknown (as it is at OSM), you're busted.

Is the active crowd made up of a handful of (paid?) Cloudmade activists?

So are we effecively talking about 99% of users doing nothing and 0.5% users doing extremely much. The contribution schemes also show a spatial distribution and, as expected, central areas where mapping parties regulary are organized show a higher number of active users.

Quote Haklay: 

"(...) the areas that were covered by very few users (up to 3) are 89.5% of the total area. (...) the fact that most of the area was covered by a single contributor means that very little quality assurance was carried out, if at all."

So the Pareto principle applies to ‘Volunteered Geographical Information’ (VGI) in a slightly modified flavor as it states "roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes".

For OSM and clearly dissected by Muki Haklay, the biggest share of contributions comes from a tiny fraction that obviously doesn't collaborate too much.

It will be most interesting to see what results a comparison of OSM data quality to Navteq or Tele Atlas datasets will reveal. Haklay's scrutiny is a welcome sober voice in a somehow hyperbolical discussion on user generated maps.

Michal Migurski with Stamen Design kickstarts something really cute: Walking Papers.

Print maps, draw on them, scan them back in and help OpenStreetMap improve its coverage of local points of interests and street detail. 

It's all about detail and ease of use to enrich existing mapping efforts:

What such partially-mapped places need is not more GPS traces, but additional knowledge about what exists on and around the street. (...) eye-level features that would be invisible on an aerial image, meaningless in the absence of base road data, and impossible to collect without a site visit (...)

The idea is to print out OSM-maps, walk around the mapped area, annotate missing artefacts manually using a simple pen, then scanning the result and uploading it.

Some poor mechanical turks then need to add nodes, correct geometries and attributes, mark POIs and sightings back into the OSM basemap.

Despite or even because of this "post-digital, medieval technology"- it's simply lovely.

The reduce-to-the-max, crispy clear website is why I deeply adore Stamen for.

At the last Apple event, Scott Forstall (SVP iPhone Software) announced turn-by-turn GPS would be coming for iPhone 3.0 -- with a little downer: due to licensing restrictions, Apple cannot pass on the right to use the built in Google Map (Tele Atlas) map tiles for turn-by-turn interfacing. Apple charmingly called this B.Y.O.M "bring your own maps" somehow neglecting that there's not too many competitors being able to provide "own maps".

Sidestep: The discussion still is if turn-by-turn (TbT) makes tremendous sense on mobile devices at all (imagine people running around on pathways being guided by synthetic voices).

Maybe just providing better or more relevant maps is a big gain for mobile people. Seeing your position being updated as you move (as the device knows where it is) and checking your bearing (as the device knows its direction) already adds up to a much better user experiences than Google Maps / Tele Atlas vehicle maps provide today.

Let's walk through the shortlist of Apple's B.Y.O.M. candidates briefly:

1. XRoad currently has G-Map as an on-board solution in the App Store. Two versions, to be true: G-Map US East and West - both use Navteq data and weigh a whopping 854 MB and sell at 19,99$. "Everything from a standalone GPS unit appears to be there, yet it’ll all be part of your phone." as quoted.
2. Navigon partners with T-Mobile (in Germany at least) announcing an iPhone application based on its MobileNavigator 7 suite.
   
3. Derivates using OpenStreetMap's tiles like OffMaps and more to come direct you to OSM, lets the user decide which OSM-tiles to store on the device. If offline, precached tiles are used - being online, tiles are requested from the site. It's a fair price at 2,39€.
4. TomTom's Mobile unit will use Tele Atlas maps and announced an offboard version of TomTom Navigator - taking the same street maps that Google Maps uses.
   
5. Navteq/Nokia likely will offer the same - just deployed on ovi.com and made compatible to S60 devices.
   

So basically it's the well-known struggle Navteq/Tele Atlas ported to just another playground.

Oh, we forgot one: ourselves, United Maps.

We do licence maps from either Navteq or Tele Atlas and generate better, higher detailed and fully routable maps for mobile usecases. We produce maps on a comprehensive basis, country by country with a full set of editorial quality control, public mass transit included. The difference the map makes: United Maps' content quality doesn't drop outside major cities (as OpenStreetMaps' does neccessarily).

This, at least, was our initial idea. Now, as things change quickly - we change accordingly and jump into the arena. United Maps goes United Apps - why not just take our maps, contain them with smart functionality, constrain ourselves to frequently traveled destinations worldwide and ... voilá United Apps isn't stretched too far.

A United App on any appstore could use the same functionality and package it with various city areas around the globe (as we positively tested).

Could be more fun to explore cities from a truely pedestrian perspective?

Three years ago, Slashgeo asked when will we see an open standard vector format.

Now, APB links to Alex Willmer's blog and a recent entry The Shapefile 2.0 manifesto.
The full article is a very smart piece:

Unfortunately, there are many GIS vector file formats,  and most are proprietary. They can only be used to their full in their native software. Three of the biggest are AutoCAD DXF, MapInfo TAB and ArcGIS Personal Geodatabase. One vector format is unique - both an open standard, and in wide use: ESRI's Shapefile.

Despite it’s popularity, Shapefile does have some serious limitations, mainly due to it’s DBF heritage:

• A shapefile is limited to 2 GB or 65535 records.
• Records are limited to 1000 bytes or 32 fields.
• Field names are limited to 8 characters, character fields can hold up to 254 bytes.
• Unicode is not supported.

Currently the only real alternative, for data exchange, is Geography Markup Language (GML) as defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). An XML dialect, GML has none of the limitations of Shapefile this is why Ordnance Survey use GML to supply MasterMap, a highly detailed vector map of Great Britain. Support for GML in software is growing, but  it’s unsuitable as a storage format.

(...)

(read on here - a great article!)